Tuesday, January 31, 2017

While I have had problems with the SSPX over the years, I have come to realize, as most intellectually honest Catholics have, that we have much much more in common with the SSPX as Roman Catholics than we have with Protestants of whatever denomination as well as the Eastern Orthodox where the more progressive Catholics are much more sympathetic and cozy than with there own brothers and sisters who are Catholic SSPXers.

That Pope Francis will be the pope to make the SSPXers fully integrated once again in the Church is an irony of ironies to say the less.

But Pope Francis who has to be intellectually honest, must know that if His Holiness is to reach out to the marginalized in the Church, he has to reach out and make regular the SSPXers who only disagree with the reform of the Mass, ecumenism and interfaith dialogue as well as VII's pastoral theology on religious liberty. Protestants for the most part reject all ecumenical councils of the Church not just some aspects of Vatican II. Eastern Orthodox don't accept any Catholic Councils after the Great Schism, but at least all seven sacraments are validly celebrated in Orthodoxy whereas not in any branch of Protestantism.

Thus, if Pope Francis is going to allow the SSPXer's to reject some aspects of Vatican II's pastoral theology as mentioned above as well as "spirit of Vatican II" developments after Vatican II, then it makes logical sense that the Pope could integrate into the full communion of the Church the Eastern Orthodox without making them accept the primacy of the pope or any developments in the Catholic Church since the Great Schism.

I have to say that it is a stunning post-Vatican II development that implied in the pope making the SSPXer's fully integrated in the Church the Magisterium is finally saying that it is not a matter of faith and morals to accept the pastoral theology of the Church in the areas of religious freedom, ecumenism and interfaith dialogue as well as dialogue with non believers. A Catholic with a good and well formed conscience could reject or accept these pastoral theologies. You would have thought, though, by practice, that these were infallible dogmas which of course they are not if we are to be intellectually honest. Neither is the suppression of the the EF Mass to be considered as anything that any pope or council could accomplish.

For those who believe Pope Francis is acting in a stealthy way to make SSPXer's like the rest of the Church, Bishop Felay has stated that that will not happen. All they have to do is to revert to the status quo.

I fear, though, that the more radical and schismatic of the SSPXers will leave the SSPX and join a truly schismatic faction like those who say the See of Peter is vacant.

Monday, January 30, 2017

i copy this true BOMBSHELL, given all the spin that Pope Francis completely opposes tradition from Rorate Carli as Pope Francis has chummed up to the SSXP!

Ecclesia Dei confirms Fellay: "Full communion with SSPX is near."

From Andrea Tornielli, who has been one of the unofficial spokesman for Pope Francis in his pontificate, in an article this morning for La Stampa:

"We are working at this moment in the completion of some aspects of the canonical frame, which will be the Personal Prelature." Archbishop Guido Pozzo, Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei commission, charged with dialogue with the Society of Saint Pius X, confirms [SSPX Superior-General Fellay's words] to Vatican Insider that the stage of full communion with the Lefebvrians is near. The accomplishment of the agreement is now in plain sight, even if some time is still needed.

🚽 CRUX has an article on the sad saga of the Knights of Malta and how it now appears that Cardinal Burke has used the Knights of Malta to get even with Pope Francis and continue his rebuke or reburke of Francis has it concerns Amoris Laetitia.

Cardinal Burke has been uncharacteristicly silent since the Knight's saga went into high meltdown.

I suspect Pope Francis, using his authority at Supreme Pontiff, has silenced His Eminence.

I suggest everyone read the Crux piece very carefully for the "rest of the story!" Burke's reburkes of the pope will go down in history but not in a flattering way. His Eminence may well have done the "reform in continuity" a deadly blow by ideologizing it as a hermeneutic against the Supreme Pontiff, the most untraditional thing a cardinal could do.

In this June 20, 2014 file photo, Pope Francis blesses the Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta, Fra' Matthew Festing, during a private audience in the pontiff's private library at the Vatican. The Knights of Malta is still insisting on its sovereignty in its showdown with the Vatican, even after Pope Francis effectively took control of the ancient religious order and announced a papal delegate would govern it through a "process of renewal." (Credit: AP Photo/Claudio Peri, Pool.)

If they did a bit more reading 📖 on the good Archbishop, they would also find to their whining horror that he fully endorses Mass in Latin as well as the Extraordinary Form of the Mass not to mention the highly sacral English of the template for the eventual and inevitable reform of the 2011 Ordinary Form Roman Missal, the glorious and new Ordinariate's Divine Worship, The Missal, which he had a hand in approving. I would say that Archbishop Roche is on the same page as his boss Cardinal Sarah. PRAYTELL denigrates Cardinal Sarah's liturgical and intellectual credentials in the exact racist way as Cardinal Casper denigrated Africans for having nothing to teach the Church, caught on tape by the heroic reporter Edwin Pentin.

Pope Benedict could have said what Archbishop Roche taught at a liturgy conference in 2012:

The Most Rev. Arthur Roche, the newly appointed Archbishop Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, gave the second annual St Bede Lecture on 14 July 2012 at Ealing Abbey. Commenting on a line from Sacrosanctum Concilium, he affirmed that the liturgy is a privileged occasion for the transformation of the quality of life of believers. Such a personal transformation is not merely a product of individual piety and devotion but properly belongs to the assembly gathered in the power of the Spirit and inheres in the celebration of the Church’s liturgy itself. Assembled communities must again be helped to perceive in the liturgy the divine presence transforming the quality of life, a presence which may sadly be neglected when the community is turned inward, distracted by its own performance of a liturgy becoming earthbound and heaven-bereft. Liturgical renewal throughout history has often called the liturgical assembly back to its identity as the body of Christ and to their affective involvement and spiritual engagement with the person of Christ present in the liturgy.

Archbishop Arthur Roche is the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and is helping to organize a special conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of ... “Sacrosanctum Concilium.” ... Speaking of the Latin Mass, the archbishop highlighted that it “will always be a part of the Roman rite” because it maintains “the language in which the Roman rite is written - whether it be the ordinary or indeed the extraordinary form.”

“It is the way in which the Church expresses itself,” he explained, observing how there has been an increase in use of Gregorian chant during Mass, “especially at international events.”

Drawing attention to the special international reach of the city of Rome, Archbishop Roche went on to say that “people from throughout the world, from every continent and from the different hemispheres, come together to share Mass and are joined together in that common expression of the singing of the Latin part of the Mass.”

- See more at: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/02/cdw-secretary-abp-roche-latin-mass.html#sthash.UhxMU1L6.dpuf

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Maybe Cardinal Burke will leave the Knights of Malta and be the Cardinal-head of the SSXP, which in a twist of divine Irony will be accompanied and fully integrated into the full Communion of the Church in a grander way than those in other irregular situations accompanied into full Communion with the Church by way of an obscure footnote! And who is the one leading the way in both instances? His Holiness Pope Francis!

From Rorate Caeli:

SSPX Superior-General Fellay: "An agreement is possible without further wait."

From the interview granted by the Superior-General of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), Bishop Bernard Fellay, to the program "Terres de Mission" by TVLibertes, a conservative French network, as reported by Italian website Radio Spada:

Bishop Fellay confirmed in the program Terres de Mission of TVLibertes broadcast minutes ago: on the factual level, relations with the Vatican are already normal, and only the seal is missing on the agreement:

"This agreement is possible, according to the Superior-general, in his view, without waiting for the situation in the Church to become complete satisfactory." [Source]

- See more at: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/01/sspx-superior-general-fellay-agreement.html#more

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Pope Francis has ordered a review of Pope Benedict's document "Liturgiam Authenticum" which guided the re-translation of the official Latin text of the Mass into a literal vernacular translation often doing violence to the vernacular language.

While our new and glorious English translation is a vast, vast, vast
improvement over the 1970 English Missal, it is far from perfect in many
of the priestly prayers.

Fr. Bruce Harbert uses the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord to point out the deficiency of the current translation in the Collect and there are similar deficiencies in other prayers and prefaces of the otherwise new and glorious English translation of the Mass:

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

This feast did not occur in the Roman Rite before Vatican II. When it was introduced into the 1970 Missal, a new Collect was composed which, like many of the newly-written prayers in our Missal, lacks the conciseness and simplicity of the older tradition. Its seven lines contain no fewer than three participial phrases - a challenge to the translator.

The alternative Collect is simpler and much more ancient, being found already in the Gelasian Sacramentary. In the official translation, the third and fourth lines contain a curious thought:

grant, we pray, that we may be inwardly transformedthrough him whom we recognize as outwardly like ourselves.

Line 4 seems to imply that Christ, though outwardly like ourselves, is inwardly unlike us. This seems to me to veer towards the heresy of Apollinarianism, which holds that Christ had no human soul. Orthodox Christianity understands that Christ is 'like us in all things but sin' (Hebrews 4,15).

The revisers have misunderstood the Latin. In fact it prays that our outward Christian profession may be matched by our inner lives. The problem, as so often in this translation, arises from incorrect placing of an adverb. It easy to mend with the help of the Morecambe Principle:

grant, we pray, that we may be inwardly transformedthrough him whom we recognize outwardly as like ourselves.

As is predictable, in the conservative blogosphere there are histrionics and threats of leaving the Church. This indicates to me the idolatry of some who are in love with the Mass but not necessarily with the Church which is the Body of Christ who is the Head of the Church and we her members. Often they worship the form, direction, music and language of the Mass and thus become idolaters. Idolatry is a mortal sin as it breaks the First Commandment.

And just as conservatives did the same sort of inviting to liberals to join the Protestant Episcopal Church since they didn't like the direction the Church was going under Pope Benedict, so now liberals are inviting conservatives to leave for schismatic traditionalist groups since they don't like what Pope Francis is doing!

But apart from us liturgical geeks 99% of practicing Catholics have greater worries than things liturgical. In fact I could use the old English translation of the 1970's Missal for the priest's prayers and I doubt anyone would notice it this weekend. Of course if I prayed them in Latin or Spanish they would notice!

As everyone knows that I am clairvoyant, I predict the congregation's parts will not change again or revert to the 1970's version. Thus I see no changes to the greeting responses, the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Mystery of Faith, Amen, Lord's Prayer or Agnus Dei.

Some of the priest's orations such as Collects and prefaces need minor revisions to make them less clunky and good English syntax. In other words these will be refined but remain authentic to the theology, spirituality and pious and devotional qualities of the Latin texts that were absent in the 1970 version.

Finally there is good reason not to lose hope about this yet again revision of our English Mass as the chairperson of the committee has a sober approach to what method should be used to translate.

This is what He as said in the past:

Archbishop Arthur Roche, who was for 10 years chairman of the International Commission for English Language in the Liturgy, addressing the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in September 2014, said the major difference between “Comme le Prévoit” (1969), which governed translation for the first liturgical books after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and “Liturgiam Authenticam,” which has since determined the translation of the Roman Missal in English, French and some Spanish-speaking countries, “was that the Holy See in its directives opted for a shift of the guiding principle of translation from that of ‘dynamic or functional equivalence’ in 1969 to the principle of ‘formal equivalence’ in 2001.”

He explained that “dynamic equivalence” was achieved when a translator detached the “content” of an utterance from the “form in which it was expressed.” But this approach has become “outmoded,” he said. Over the last 40 years, specialists in language “have become more aware that the form we choose for an utterance is itself expressive of our purpose in speaking.” The Holy See in “Liturgiam Authenticam”opted for “the formal equivalence,” he stated.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Cardinal Dolan's prolife homily from last night as reported by Whispers in the Logia:

One week ago tonight – cigars all around, surrounded by his Roman students, and on the eve of what would inevitably be the most-watched moment of his life (leading the Scripture readings at the Inauguration of an American President) – it should be no surprise that the Cardinal-Archbishop of New York was even more fired up than usual...

...yet even as he carried the Church's patriotic part onto the Capitol's West Front, to know Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan is to know how the "other shoe" still had yet to drop.

While the reigning occupant of 452 Madison ripped the leading Republican contender for the Presidency with the loaded charge of "nativism" during the primaries in light of Donald Trump's draconian stance on immigration, the eventual GOP nominee from just up Fifth Avenue responded in kind by defacing Gotham's long-sacred comity of the Al Smith Dinner as the Tenth Archbishop of the "Capital of the World" presided from the center of the Waldorf dais and a global audience looked on....

And, among other bits, that backstory brings us to tonight.

In his role as the US bishops' chair for pro-life activities – given the portfolio's significance, the bench's lone post always held by a cardinal – and all of 24 hours since the body's current scarlet-clad chief raised an oddly muted "alarm" from his Texas base over the 45th President's first Executive Orders on immigration (thus fulfilling the campaign's signal pledges), in leading the masses of the faithful toward tomorrow's March for Life in the capital, Dolan himself took up the wider pro-family, pro-Francis call with vigor... yet the packed crowd's customary rounds of applause to begin the rally somehow turned to crickets.

Arguably a reflection on the wider hierarchy's guarded stance toward the new administration – even for the firm pledges (and, indeed, first actions) from Trump & Co. on the ever-critical abortion front – this time around, the traditional flood of bishops on hand to kick off this year's nightlong Vigil in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception ended up looking like more of a trickle.

And for the cardinal-chair to use a certain charged term on another life issue as the springboard for his marquee preach in the nation's largest church, well, do the math....

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Grand Master of the Order of Malta with whom he had been in conflict for more than a month. This marks a new chapter in the opposition to the Argentine pontiff.

Nicolas Senèze, Rome

January 26, 2017

By obtaining the resignation on Wednesday of the Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta, Pope Francis has made an important point to those who call into question the deep reforms he is undertaking in the Vatican and the Church. Not that Brother Matthew Festing is a personal enemy of the pope, but the conflict between Francis and the Knights of Malta represents the sum of all the opposition he is encountering in his will to reform.

The chronology of events is perplexing. In early December, the Grand Master of the Order demanded the resignation of Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager, who is accused of being "a liberal Catholic, unfaithful to the teachings of the Church."

Present at this discussion, was Cardinal Raymond Burke, the pope's representative to the Order and one of his main opponents, who led a public attack against the exhortation Amoris laetitia, on possible access to the sacraments by divorcees who remarry. With three retired cardinals, he asked the pope to clarify certain points, to force him to return to the text - something that no pope had done for at least two centuries - and to lessen the magisterial scope of the Vatican.

Within the Order of Malta, the attacks against von Boeselager, who was accused of having allowed the distribution of condoms by the Order in Burma in 2005, was a moral issue. The German explained to the grand master that the matter had been settled and refused to resign. Supported, at least in silence, by Cardinal Burke, Matthew Festing insisted that it was "the will of the Holy See."

Ten days later, von Boeselager's own brother, Georg, was appointed to the superintendency of the Institute for Religious Works (known as the IOR), or the "Vatican bank". With two other bankers, he replaced officials of the IOR who, defending the idea of creating a Vatican investment fund in Luxembourg opposed by the Pope, had to resign in May. Seen against this backdrop, the attacks against von Boeselager appear more and more as a challenge to the reform of the Vatican’s finances and those who are implementing them.

Already, under Benedict XVI, it was on the issue of its finances that the Vatican was most violently attacked. The VatiLeaks affair, the leaking of documents from the Pope's office, began shortly after the German pope had begun a vast clean-up of the Vatican's finances, including the IOR where scandals were multiplying.

Even if the IOR has not been a questionable structure as such, shady businesses have clearly used personal ties with naive prelates to hide their shady dealings under the seal of Vatican banking secrecy. Warned of this, Benedict XVI had courageously tried to put an end to these practices but, as he progressed, the obstacles multiplied.

Still, more than the mafia-type dealings, it is the financial system itself that has obstructed the popes’ efforts. As early as 2009, in his encyclical Caritas in veritate, where he began to call into question the capitalist system, Benedict XVI was criticized by American conservatives. This discourse from the German pope was to be significantly developed and amplified by his successor. In his exhortation Evangelii gaudium, Francis directly opposed the "trickledown theory", one of the liberal dogmas in the United States. And in many of his speeches, he tackled the misdeeds of an unruly capitalism, the "silver god" that "corrupts", the economy that "kills".

In the United States, such talk which challenges the foundations of American free enterprise goes down badly. Francis has been described as a "Marxist" pope. His encyclical Laudato struck also against the discourse of climate change denial pushed by the petroleum giants.

Currently, the most severe attacks against the pope are coming from the United States. At the Order of Malta, the case of the Burmese condoms was put forward by the "Lepanto Institute for the restoration of all things in Christ". This ultraconservative organization specialized in the denunciation of "gays” entering the Church and in attacks on the major development associations that question unfettered economic liberalism.

One of its leaders is the president of the Republican Party in Virginia. Another, a well-known American conservative activist, also leads the “Alliance for the Common Good”, chaired by Keith Fournier, deacon of the diocese of Richmond and a member of the Catholic support group formed by Donald Trump during his campaign.

The US-based Breitbart website, founded by Steve Bannon, now Trump's strategic advisor, was also very influential in the presidential campaign and does not hide its hostility towards the pope. In an interview with the New York Times, its correspondent in Rome recently explained that his bosses strongly encouraged him to write about the pope’s opponents, notably Cardinal Burke, "a friend of Mr. Bannon" who himself "distrusts" Francis.

One of the issues in the upcoming media battle will be to convince middle-class Catholic Americans that Francis, already portrayed as an enemy of the foundations of American economic power, wants to attack its most sacred value, the family. (The pope gets 87% favorable opinions, according to a study published last week by the Pew American research center.)

Hence the virulent speech aimed at discrediting Amoris laetitia. This no doubt explains why Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the “Pontifical Academy for Life” and one of the favorite targets of the ultraconservatives, has just been sent by the pope to the United States on a long mission.

However, even if they have powerful support, the pope’s opponents are few in Rome. Those closest to him say that Francois is not worried about their actions. It must be added that he had other opponents when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. He also enjoys the effective support of his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who discreetly and courageously has suffered many attacks in the pope’s place.

The mastery with which Francis has shown in handling the crisis with the Knights of Malta, which will now be managed by a pontifical delegate, thereby isolating Cardinal Burke a little more, shows the extent of his serenity in dealing with events.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

I did not know that Mary Tyler Moore was baptized and reared as a Catholic. I do not know what her practice of the Faith was as an adult. But we know that once a Catholic always a Catholic. I hope a priest was called to her death bed.

She was born and reared Catholic in New York, according to Wikipedia:

Moore was born in the Brooklyn Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, to Marjorie (née Hackett) (1916–92) and George Tyler Moore (1913–2006), a clerk. The oldest of three children (her siblings are John and Elizabeth), Moore and her family lived in Flushing, Queens. Her paternal great-grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Tilghman Moore, owned the house which is now Stonewall Jackson’s Headquarters Museum. When she was eight years old, Moore moved with her family to Los Angeles. She was raised Catholic, and attended St. Rose de Lima Parochial School in Brooklyn, Saint Ambrose School in Los Angeles, and Immaculate Heart High School in Los Feliz, California.

Deacon Greg Kendra exclaims: What a talent. What a life. Rest in peace, Mare.Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her…Below, one of the most sublime pieces of comedy ever shown on American television: the funeral of Chuckles the Clown from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” I don’t think Mary would mind if we watched and laughed again.

His Holiness, Pope Francis, Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church, still wears the tiara not literally but figuratively by the manner in which His Holiness exercises his power and authority by virtue of His high office.

The pope's proper title, according to the Vatican's website,
is Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of
the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy,
Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the
State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God.

I find a bit of hypocrisy in pseudo-traditionalists crying crocodile tears because Pope Francis acts as the Supreme Pontiff of the Church by his actions. If Pope Benedict XVI or any other pope of a more conservative theology did so, His Holiness would be applauded. In fact many traditionalists were flummoxed that Pope Benedict did not impose as fully as His Holiness could have, the direction of the Liturgy that His Holiness modeled.

We see Pope Francis acting in a very pre-Vatican II papal way in terms of imposing His Holiness' agenda for the Church on those who are subject to His Holiness which is every Catholic in the world. It is not only in terms of Faith and Morals but governance as well. The Knights of Malta have learned this in the most difficult way and so have the bishops of the last two synods.

Synodality is advisory. The pope has the final world as His Holiness has had with Amoris Laetitia. His interpretation of the most controversial chapter is the one that stands contrary to others who might want a course direction or clarification. His Holiness is under no obligation to say more or less than what His Holiness has chosen to say or not say. That's the way it is. True traditional Catholics understood this quite well prior to Vatican II but not so much now because they are as much "coloring book Catholics" as so many liberals are.

The good thing about Pope Francis authoritarian bent is that His Holiness is recovering pre-Vatican II papal authority, a top down approach but couching it in a stealthy way as a bottom up sort of thing, which is really isn't if the truth be told. Thus in continuity with this recovered theology from the pre-Vatican II Church, a more conservative or traditionalist pope should take note.

I think that all pastors who have pastoral councils insist as Church law does, that these councils are advisory, but most pastors know how to work the system in a sort of lobbying way to get want they want despite the best efforts of councils to usurp his canonical authority. Pope Francis is a role model for these kinds of priests.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

In his homily Pope Francis reflected on the theme for this year’s week of prayer, which is ‘Reconciliation: the love of Christ compels us’.
Reconciliation, he said, is a gift from Christ. Prior to any human
effort by believers who strive to overcome their divisions, he said,
reconciliation is God’s gift given freely to each one of us.
“How do we proclaim this Gospel of reconciliation today after
centuries of division?”, the Pope asked. St Paul himself makes clear
that reconciliation requires sacrifice and a revolution of our way of
living, he said. Just as Jesus laid down his life for us, so we are
called to lay down our lives, by living no longer for ourselves and our
own interests, but living instead for Christ and in Christ.

Leave behind isolation and self-absorption

For Christians of every confession, the Pope said, this is an
invitation not to be caught up with programmes and plans, not to be
obsessed with contemporary fashions, but to be focused on the Cross
where we can “discover our programme of life”. The Cross invites us to
leave behind all isolation and self-absorption which prevents us from
seeing how the Holy Spirit is at work outside our familiar surroundings.

Joint Reformation commemorations "a remarkable achievement"

While looking back can be helpful and necessary to purify our memory,
the Pope said, being fixated on the past and the memory of wrongs done
can paralyze us and prevent us from living in the present. Pope Francis
recalled in particular the fact that Catholics and Lutherans are today
joining in commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant
Reformation, something he described as “a remarkable achievement”.

Pray, proclaim and serve together

Greeting especially Metropolitan Gennadios, representing the
Ecumenical Patriarchate and Archbishop David Moxon, representing the
Anglican Communion, Pope Francis urged all those present to take
advantage of every occasion to pray together, to proclaim together and
to love and serve together, especially those who are the poorest and
most neglected in our midst.

Please find below the full English text of Pope Francis’ homily at Vespers for the Conversion of St Paul

Encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus radically transformed the
life of Saint Paul. Henceforth, for him, the meaning of life would no
longer consist in trusting in his own ability to observe the Law
strictly, but rather in cleaving with his whole being to the gracious
and unmerited love of God: to Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Paul
experienced the inbreaking of a new life, life in the Spirit. By the
power of the risen Lord, he came to know forgiveness, confidence and
consolation. Nor could Paul keep this newness to himself. He was
compelled by grace to proclaim the good news of the love and
reconciliation that God offers fully in Christ to all humanity.

For the Apostle of the Gentiles, reconciliation with God, whose
ambassador he became (cf. 2 Cor 5:20), is a gift from Christ. This is
evident in the text of the Second Letter to the Corinthians which
inspired the theme of this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity:
“Reconciliation – The Love of Christ Compels Us” (cf. 2 Cor 5:14-20).
“The love of Christ”: this is not our love for Christ, but rather
Christ’s love for us. Nor is the reconciliation to which we are
compelled simply our own initiative. Before all else it is the
reconciliation that God offers us in Christ. Prior to any human effort
on the part of believers who strive to overcome their divisions, it is
God’s free gift. As a result of this gift, each person, forgiven and
loved, is called in turn to proclaim the Gospel of reconciliation in
word and deed, to live and bear witness to a reconciled life.

Today, in the light of this, we can ask: How do we proclaim this
Gospel of reconciliation after centuries of division? Paul himself helps
us to find the way. He makes clear that reconciliation in Christ
requires sacrifice. Jesus gave his life by dying for all. Similarly,
ambassadors of reconciliation are called, in his name, to lay down their
lives, to live no more for themselves but for Christ who died and was
raised for them (cf. 2 Cor 5:14-15). As Jesus teaches, it is only when
we lose our lives for love of him that we truly save them (cf. Lk 9:24).
This was the revolution experienced by Paul, but it is, and always has
been, the Christian revolution. We live no longer for ourselves, for our
own interests and “image”, but in the image of Christ, for him and
following him, with his love and in his love.

For the Church, for every Christian confession, this is an invitation
not to be caught up with programmes, plans and advantages, not to look
to the prospects and fashions of the moment, but rather to find the way
by constantly looking to the Lord’s cross. For there we discover our
programme of life. It is an invitation to leave behind every form of
isolation, to overcome all those temptations to self-absorption that
prevent us from perceiving how the Holy Spirit is at work outside our
familiar surroundings. Authentic reconciliation between Christians will
only be achieved when we can acknowledge each other’s gifts and learn
from one another, with humility and docility, without waiting for the
others to learn first.

If we experience this dying to ourselves for Jesus’ sake, our old way
of life will be a thing of the past and, like Saint Paul, we will pass
over to a new form of life and fellowship. With Paul, we will be able to
say: “the old has passed away” (2 Cor 5:17).

To look back is helpful, and indeed necessary, to purify our memory,
but to be fixated on the past, lingering over the memory of wrongs done
and endured, and judging in merely human terms, can paralyze us and
prevent us from living in the present. The word of God encourages us to
draw strength from memory and to recall the good things the Lord has
given us. But it also asks us to leave the past behind in order to
follow Jesus today and to live a new life in him. Let us allow him, who
makes all things new (cf. Rev 21:5), to unveil before our eyes a new
future, open to the hope that does not disappoint, a future in which
divisions can be overcome and believers, renewed in love, will be fully
and visibly one.

This year, in our journey on the road to unity, we recall in a
special way the fifth centenary of the Protestant Reformation. The fact
that Catholics and Lutherans can nowadays join in commemorating an event
that divided Christians, and can do so with hope, placing the emphasis
on Jesus and his work of atonement, is a remarkable achievement, thanks
to God and prayer, and the result of fifty years of growing mutual
knowledge and ecumenical dialogue.

As we implore from God the gift of reconciliation with him and with
one another, I extend cordial and fraternal greetings to His Eminence
Metropolitan Gennadios, the representative of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, to His Grace David Moxon, the personal representative in
Rome of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to all the representatives of
the various Churches and Ecclesial Communities gathered here. I am
especially pleased to greet the members of the joint Commission for
theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Eastern
Orthodox Churches, and to offer my good wishes for the fruitfulness of
the plenary session taking place in these days. I also greet the
students of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey, who are visiting Rome to
deepen their knowledge of the Catholic Church, and the Orthodox and
Eastern Orthodox young people studying in Rome thanks to the
scholarships provided by the Committee for Cultural Collaboration with
Orthodox Churches, based in the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity. To the superiors and staff of this Dicastery I express
my esteem and gratitude.

Dear brothers and sisters, our prayer for Christian unity is a
sharing in Jesus’ own prayer to the Father, on the eve of his passion,
“that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). May we never tire of asking God
for this gift. With patient and trusting hope that the Father will grant
all Christians the gift of full visible communion, let us press forward
in our journey of reconciliation and dialogue, encouraged by the heroic
witness of our many brothers and sisters, past and present, who were
one in suffering for the name of Jesus. May we take advantage of every
occasion that Providence offers us to pray together, to proclaim
together, and together to love and serve, especially those who are the
most poor and neglected in our midst.

John Nolan may find this fascinating. I certainly do. I wish my mom and dad were still alive because they would never have seen this footage or known that it still existed (now on the internet!).

My dad would have been in the crowd of American soldiers when Churchill came to Livorno and certainly my mom would have been nearby.

The most fascinating part of this is when Churchill boards a boat and takes a harbor view of the destruction of Livorno. It starts at minute 4:25. My mom had told me in descriptive terms what that her city had been completely destroyed but I had never seen photos let alone moving pictures of it. I found this video by accident about two years ago. There is another video showing Livorno being bombed from the bomb bay of an air craft and I am certain that it was in that bombing that my mother's apartment building took a direct hit and was completely destroyed killing all who had taken refuge in its basement. My mom and her family were in another part of the city at the time and were spared. My mom would have been in her 20's at the time.

This was August 19, 1944 and my parents would have been married, December 1, 1945 in Livorno:

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Pluff mud is that aromatic, sucky, slimy, shell fishy smelling mud in the Low Country of South Carolina (across the Savannah River from Savannah, which also has Pluff mud marshes) (like Blufton, Hilton Head and Beaufort) that forms the tidal salt water marshes. You can get stuck in it and not able to get out without help. And since these are tidal marshes, you will drown when the tide comes in which if not for an eight year old girl last week, a man from the Low Country would not be here today. Fun no?

And it does. He got sucked in up to his belly button by the Lowcountry ooze when he went into the marsh to get his dog. If an 8-year-old girl had
not heard his cries for help, Beaufort/Port Royal Fire Department and
Beaufort Water Search and Rescue squad members may not have pulled him
out before the tide came in.

This happens a lot. Three to
five times a year, volunteers with the search and rescue squad act as
the hand of God in the mud vs. man trauma.

And it’s not always man.

One
of Walter Gay’s horses that was used for carriage tours through
downtown Beaufort almost gave up the ghost in the marshes of St. Helena
Island. Old Doc, a 2,000-pound beast with two blue eyes, got himself so stuck it the pluff mud that it took a fire hose and almost 20 people more than an hour of coordinated “Pulls!” to free him.

8-year-old Lilly Pike, of Beaufort, talks about how she felt on Monday,
Jan. 16, 2017, when she heard a man yelling for help in the marsh while
playing behind her friend's home in Beaufort.

On Hilton Head Island a number of years ago, one of our busy
news days was interrupted by the report of a goat-chase on the Cross
Island Parkway bridge. The goat was headed into traffic, toward the
beach, when a fire engine company happened by and intervened. The cars
were easily stopped, but the goat was not. The old nanny decided to take
her chances down below.

She plunged off the bridge some 30 to 50 feet into the marshes of Broad Creek.

“No
kidding,” the headline read. It took a slew of people the rest of the
day to rescue the stuck goat, every inch covered in slick, black pluff
mud.

Lowcountry watermen know to watch for falling goats, but I still think we should put up warning signs for tourists.

Visitors call our marsh the swamp. It’s not. And they say it stinks. It doesn’t.

It
is the nursery for our three main food groups: shrimp, crabs and
oysters. Bathed twice a day by the salty tides and held together by
waves of Spartina grass, our marsh is the most fruitful land on earth if
we would just leave it alone and quit draining it, diking it, dumping
waste into it and chopping down the underbrush at its edges.

The marsh’s sweet aroma has the pull of home to people sophisticated enough to appreciate mullet and grits.

Our own Pat Conroy called it the smell of the South in heat.

And there is a love affair between pluff mud and the people of the Lowcountry.
Dock-diving children — and some frisky adults — have always liked to rub their whole bodies with pluff mud.

We
slurp it down whether we know it or not at the Bluffton Rotary Club’s
annual oyster roast as the setting sun turns the May River orange. And a
new batch of newcomers learn the wisdom of the bumper sticker: “Pluff
Mud: Tastes Better Than It Smells.”

Then there are those
who venture out into it. They find that pluff mud eats flip flops like
popcorn shrimp, and sucks down tennis shoes like crab legs.

But if you find yourself sunk up to your underwear, do as the experts tell you to do and crawl like a fiddler crab.

Charles
Seabrook, who grew up on Johns Island and became a journalist of the
scientific and natural world, wrote the book on the marsh that should be
required reading for everyone in Beaufort County.
In
“The World of the Salt Marsh” comes this advice from his experiences of
being waist-deep in sneaky pluff mud lying like black mayonnaise by a
small drainage creek in the marsh:

“I struggle to
extricate myself. The mud is gripping my legs, and my old sneakers are
about to slip off my feet. For a fleeting instant I panic, fearful that I
might sink deeper and become irretrievably stuck. But I have been in
this predicament before. I bend over and lie on my stomach in the mud.
This somehow gives me leverage enough to wiggle my legs free, and I
belly-crawl in the mud to the edge of the creek, where the mud is
firmer. Thank goodness it’s low tide and no water is in the creek.”

Question. Your Holiness, after nearly four years in
the Vatican, what is left of the street priest that came from Buenos
Aires to Rome with the return ticket in his pocket?Answer. He is still a street priest. Because, as
soon as I can, I still go out on the streets to greet people at the
general audiences, or when I am traveling... my character has not
changed. I'm not saying that is a deliberate thing: it has been a
natural process. It is not true that you have to change once you get
here. To change is unnatural. To change at 76 is tantamount to putting
on makeup. Perhaps I cannot do everything I want, but my street soul is
alive, and you can see it.Q. In the last days of his papacy, Benedict XVI said
about his last years at the helm of the Catholic Church: "The waters
ran troubled and God seemed asleep". Have you felt that loneliness too?
Was the Church hierarchy asleep with regard to people's problems, both
new and old?

The pope drinks mate during an audience in Rome on August 31, 2016. Stefano Spaziani

A. Within the Church hierarchy, or among the
Catholic Church's pastoral agents (bishops, priests, nuns, laymen), I am
more afraid of those who are anesthetized than of those who are asleep.
I am talking about those who are anesthetized by mundane affairs. They
sell out to mundaneness. That is what worries me. Everything is
seemingly calm, everything is apparently quiet, everything is going
right...that is too much order. When you read the Acts of the Apostles,
Saint Paul's epistles, it was a mess, there were troubles, people were
on the move. There was movement and there was contact with people. An
anesthetized person is not in touch with people. He protects himself
against reality. He is anesthetized. Nowadays there are so many ways of
anesthetizing oneself against daily life, aren't there? Maybe the most
dangerous illness for a pastor is the one produced by anesthetics, and
that is clericalism. I am over here and the people are over there. But
you are those people's pastor! If you don't take care of those people,
if you give up on taking care of those people, then you should pack your
bags and retire.Q. Is there a part of the Catholic Church that is anesthetized?A. It is a risk that we all run. It is a danger, it is seriously tempting. Being anesthetized is easier.Q. It is a better life, a more comfortable life.A. That is why, rather than those who are asleep, I
worry about those who are anesthetized as a result of that mundane
spirit. A spiritual mundanity. I am always struck by the fact that Jesus
Christ, during the last supper, when he prays to his Father on behalf
of his disciples, he does not ask "Keep from breaking the Fifth
Commandment, keep them from killing, from breaking the Seventh
Commandment, keep them from stealing". No, he says: "Keep them from the
evils of the world, keep them from the world". A mundane spirit has a
numbing effect. When that happens, the pastor becomes a civil servant.
And that is clericalism, which is the worst evil that may be afflicting
today's Church.Q. The troubles that Benedict XVI faced towards the
end of his papacy, and which were contained inside that white box that
he gave you in Castel Gandolfo, what are they?A. A very normal sample of daily life within the
Church: saints and sinners, honest people and crooked people. Everything
was in there! There were people who had been questioned and were clean,
there were workers... Because here, inside the Curia, there are some
true saints. I like to say it. We talk too easily about the level of
corruption in the Curia. And there are corrupt people. But there are
also many saints. Men who have spent all their lives serving people
anonymously, behind a desk, or in conversation, or in a study...Herein
there are saints and sinners. That day, what struck me the most was holy
Benedict's memory. He said: "Look, here are the records of the
proceedings, inside the box". "And here is the sentencing of all the
individuals. So-and-so, he got that much". He remembered everything!
What an extraordinary memory. And he still retains it.

Q. Does he feel all right, health-wise?A. His head is fine. His problem are the legs. He
needs help to walk. He has an elephant's memory, even in nuances. I may
say something and he goes: "No, it wasn't that year, it was that other
year."Q. What are your main concerns with regard to the Church and the world in general?A. With regard to the Church, I would say that I
hope that it never stops being close to people. A Church that is not
close to people is not a Church. It's a good NGO. Or a pious
organization made up of good people who meet for tea and charity work...
The hallmark of the Church is its proximity. We are all the Church.
Therefore, the problem we should avoid is breaking that closeness. Being
close is touching, touching Christ in the flesh and blood through your
neighbor. When Jesus tells us how are we going to be judged, in Matthew
chapter 25, he always talks about reaching out to your neighbor: I was
hungry, I was in prison, I was sick... Always being close to the needs
of your neighbor. Which is not just charity. It is much more.

Hitler didn't steal power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people

As for what worries me about the world, it is war. We already have a
World War III in little bits and pieces. Lately there is talk of a
possible nuclear war, as though it were a card game: they are playing
cards. That is my biggest concern. I am worried about the economic
inequalities in the world: the fact that a small group of humans has
over 80% of the world's wealth, with all its implications for the liquid
economy, which at its center has money as a god, instead of men and
women. Hence the throwaway culture.Q. Your Holiness, going back to the global problems
you just mentioned, Donald Trump is just now being sworn in as president
of the United States, and the whole world is tense because of it. What
do you make of it?A. I think that we must wait and see. I don't like
to get ahead of myself, nor to judge people prematurely. We will see how
he acts, what he does, and then I will form an opinion. But being
afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen
is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting
calamities or windfalls that will not come to pass. We will see what he
does and will judge accordingly. Always work with the specific.
Christianity is either specific or it is not Christianity.
It is interesting that the first heresy in the Church took place just
after the death of Jesus Christ: the gnostic heresy, condemned by the
apostle John. Which was what I call a spray-paint religiousness, a
non-specific religiousness...nothing concrete. No, no way. We need
specifics. And from the specific we can draw consequences. We are losing
our sense of the concrete. The other day, a thinker was telling me that
this world is so upside down that it needs a fixed point. And those
fixed points stem from concrete actions. What did you do, what did you
decide, what moves did you make? That is why I prefer to wait and see.Q. Aren't you worried about the things we have heard up until now?A. I'm still waiting. God waited so long for me, with all my sins...

The pope at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem in May 2014. ANDREW MEDICHINIAFP

Q. For the most traditionalist sectors, any change,
even if it is only a change in language, amounts to treachery. At the
other end of the spectrum, even for those who will never embrace the
Catholic faith, no change is ever enough. You yourself have said that
everything has already been written in the essence of Christianity. Are
we then talking about a revolution of normalcy?A. I always try —I don't know if I always succeed—
to do what the Gospel says. That is what I try. I am a sinner and not
always successful, but that is what I try. The history of the Church has
not been driven by theologians, or priests, or nuns, or bishops...
Maybe in part, but the true heroes of the Church are the saints. That
is, those men and women who devoted their lives to making the Gospel a
reality. They are the ones who saved us: the saints. We sometimes think
that a saint is a nun that looks up to the heavens and rolls her eyes.
The saints are the specific examples of the Gospel in daily life! And
the theology that you learn from a saint's life is immense. There is no
doubt that the theologians and the pastors are necessary. They are part
of the Church. But we must come back to that: the Gospel. And who are
the best messengers of the Gospel? The saints. You used the word
"revolution". That is a revolution! I am not a saint. I am not making
any revolution. I am just trying to push the Gospel forward. In an
imperfect way, because I make my blunders from time to time.Q. Don't you think that many Catholics may feel
something like the syndrome of the prodigal son's sibling, and may think
that you are more focused on those who left than on those who remained
and obeyed the Church's commandments? I remember that in one of your
trips, a German journalist asked you why you never talk about the middle
class, about those who pay their taxes...A. There are two questions in there. The syndrome of
the eldest child: I know that those who feel comfortable within a
Church structure that doesn't ask too much of them, or who have
attitudes that protect them from too much outside contact, are going to
feel uneasy with any change, with any proposal coming from the Gospel. I
like to think about the owner of the hotel where the Samaritan took the
man who was beaten and robbed by thieves along the way. The owner knew
the story, the Samaritan had told him: a priest had passed by, he looked
at the time, saw that he was late for temple and left the man there, he
didn't want to get blood-stained because that would prevent him from
celebrating mass according to the law. A lawyer passed by, he looked and
said: "I better not get involved, it will make me late, tomorrow in
court I will have to testify and... No, it's better not to get
involved." As if he had been born in Buenos Aires, he turned his back
using that city's slogan: "Better not get involved". And then along came
a man who was not Jewish, he was a pagan, he was a sinner, he was
deemed the scum of the earth, yet he was moved by the hurt man's plight
and he helped him get up. The owner's astonishment was tremendous,
because it was unusual.
The novelty of the Gospel is astonishing because it is essentially
scandalous. Saint Paul tells us about the scandal of the cross, the
scandal of the Son of God becoming man. It is a good kind of scandal,
because Jesus condemns the outrage against children too. But the
evangelical essence was scandalous by those days' criteria. By any
mundane criteria, it is a scandalous essence. So the eldest child
syndrome is the syndrome of anyone who is too settled within the Church,
the one who has clear ideas about everything, who knows what must be
done and doesn't want to listen to strange sermons. That is the
explanation for our martyrs: they gave their lives for preaching
something that was upsetting.
That is your first question. As for the second one: I didn't want to
answer the German journalist right away, but I told him: I am going to
think about it, you may be somewhat right... I am always talking about
the middle class, even without mentioning it. I use a term coined by the
French novelist Malègue, who talks about "the middle class of
sanctity". I am always talking about parents, grandparents, nurses, the
people who live to serve others, who raise their kids, who go to work...
Those people are tremendously saintly! And they are also the ones who
carry the Church onward: the ones who earn their living with dignity,
who raise their children, who bury their dead, who care for their elders
instead of putting them into an old people's home: that is our saintly
middle class.
From an economic point of view, these days the middle class
increasingly tends to vanish, and there is the risk that we will take
shelter in our ideological caves. But this "middle class of sanctity":
the father, the mother who celebrate their family, with their sins and
their virtues, the grandfather, the grandmother, with the family at the
center, that is "the middle class of sanctity". That was a great insight
on the part of Malègue, who writes a sentence that is really
impressive. In one of his novels, Augustine, an atheist asks
him: "But do you believe that Jesus Christ is God?" He is presenting the
problem: Do you think that the Nazarene is God? "For me, it is not a
problem", is the protagonist's answer, "the problem would have been if
God hadn't become the Christ". That is "the middle class of sanctity".

My concern is for women to give us their thinking, because the
Church is female, it is Jesus Christ’s wife, and that is the theological
foundation of women

Q. Your Holiness, you have mentioned the ideological caves. What do you mean by that? What are your concerns in this regard?A. It is not a concern. I am stating the facts. One
is always more at ease in the ideological system that he has built for
himself, because it is abstract.Q. Has it been exacerbated in recent years?A. It has always existed. I would not say it has
been exacerbated, there has also been much disappointment in connection
with that statement. I think there was more [polarization] in the period
before World War II. I think. I haven't given it much thought. I am
putting things together... In the restaurant of life you always get many
ideological dishes. You may always take refuge in that. They are
shelters that prevent you from connecting with reality.Q. Holy Father, over the course of these years,
during your trips, we have seen you get moved by others and in turn you
have moved many who listened to you... There are three very special
occasions: once in Lampedusa, when you asked whether we had cried with
the women who lost their children to the sea; in Sardinia, when you
spoke about unemployment and the victims of the global financial system;
in the Philippines, over the tragedy of the exploited children. What
can the Church do about it, what is being done, and what are governments
doing?

The pope with Fidel Castro during a visit to Havana in September 2015. Alex CastroAP

A. The symbol I proposed for the new Migrations
office —in the new structure, I took directly over the department of
Migrations and Refugees, with two secretaries— is an orange life jacket,
like the ones we all know. During a general audience, there was a group
of people working to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean. I was
passing through, greeting people, and a man had one of those things in
his hands and he started to cry on my shoulder, and he sobbed: "I wasn't
able to do it, I didn't get to her in time, I wasn't able to do it."
And when he calmed down a little he told me: "She wasn't more than four
years old. And she went down. I am giving this to you." This a symbol of
the tragedy that we are living.Q. Are governments rising to the occasion?A. Everyone does what they can or what they want to
do. It is very hard to pass judgment. Undoubtedly, the fact that the
Mediterranean has become a graveyard is food for thought.Q. Do you feel that the way you reach out to the
margins, to those who suffer and are lost, is a welcome attitude,
considering it is accompanied by a machine that is perhaps used to a
very different pace? Do you feel that you and the Church go at a
different pace? Do you feel support?A. I think that, fortunately, the responses are
generally good, very good. When I asked the parishes and the schools in
Rome to take in immigrants, many said that it had been a failure. It is
not true! It was not a failure at all! A high percentage of Rome's
parishes, when they didn't have a big house or they had a very little
one, they had their parishioners rent an apartment for an immigrant
family. In convent schools, whenever there was room, they welcomed an
immigrant family... The answer is that we have done more than you know,
because we haven't advertised it. The Vatican has two parishes and each
parish has an immigrant family. An apartment at the Vatican for one
family, another for the other one. The response has been constant. Not a
100% response, I don't know the proportion, I think maybe 50%.
Then there is the problem of integration. Each immigrant constitutes a
very serious problem. They are fleeing their country, because of hunger
or because of the war. They are exploited. Take Africa: Africa is the
symbol of exploitation. Even when given their independence, in some
countries, they are the owners of their land on the surface, but not
underground. So they are always used and abused...
The migrant reception policy has several phases. There is an emergency phase:
you have to welcome them, because otherwise they will drown. Italy and
Greece have led by example. Even now, Italy, with all the problems
caused by the earthquake, still provides care. They come to Italy
because it is the nearest shore, of course. I think they also get to
Spain through Ceuta. But rather than staying in Spain, most of them tend
to go north in search of better opportunities.Q. But in Spain there is a fence in Ceuta and Melilla, so they cannot go through.A. Yes, I know. And they want to go north. So the
problem is: welcome them, yes, for a couple of months, give them
accommodations. But the integration process must start at some point.
Receive and integrate. The role model for all the world is Sweden.
Sweden has nine million people. Of those, 890,000 are "new Swedes",
children of immigrants or immigrants with Swedish citizenship. The
Foreign minister —I think it was her, the one who came to send me off—
is a young woman, the daughter of a Swedish mother and a father from
Gabon. Integrated immigrants. The problem is integration. When there is
not integration, ghettos spring up. I am not blaming anyone, but it is a
fact that there are ghettos. The young men who committed the atrocity
in Zaventem [airport] were Belgian, they were born in Belgium. However,
they lived in an immigrant neighborhood, a closed neighborhood. So the
second phase is the key: integration. So much so that, what is the big
problem for Sweden now? It isn't that they don't want any more
immigrants to come, no! They can't get enough of the integration
programs! They wonder what else they can do to get more people to come.
It is astonishing. It is an example for the whole world. And it is
nothing new. I said it right from the start, after Lampedusa... I knew
of Sweden because of all the Argentinians, Uruguayans, Chileans who went
there in the era of the military dictatorships and who were welcomed
there. I have friends who went there as refugees and who live there. You
go to Sweden and they give you a healthcare program, papers, a
residency permit... And then you have a home, and the following week you
have a school to learn the language, and a little bit of work, and you
are on your way.
In that respect, Sant'Egidio in Italy is another model to follow. The
Vatican is in charge of 22 [migrants], and we are taking care of them,
and they are slowly becoming independent. The second day, the kids were
going to school. The second day! And the parents are getting gradually
settled in an apartment, with a bit of work here, a bit of work there...
They have instructors to teach them the language... Sant'Egidio has
that same attitude. So, the problem is: urgent rescue, of course, for
everyone. Second: receive, welcome as best as possible. Afterwards,
integrate.Q. Your Holiness, half a century has passed since
many significant events happened: the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul
VI's trip to the Holy Land and his embrace with the Patriarch
Athenagoras. Some people say that in order to know you, one must know
Paul VI. He was up to a point the unappreciated Pope. Do you also feel
that way, like an uncomfortable Pope?A. No, no. I think that I should be less well understood because of my sins. Paul VI was the unappreciated martyr. (...) Evangelii gadium, which frames the pastoral principles that I want for the Church, is an update of Paul VI's Evangelii Nuntiandi.
He is a man who was ahead of history. And he suffered a lot. He was a
martyr. There were many things that he wasn't able to do, he was a
realistic person and he knew that he wasn't able to and he suffered for
it, but he offered us his suffering. He did what he could. And the best
thing that he did was planting the seeds. The seeds of things that
history collected afterwards. Evangeli Gadium is a mix of Evangeli Nuntiandi and the Aparecida document. Things that developed from the bottom up. Evangeli Nuntiandi
is the best post-Council pastoral paper, and it is still relevant. I
don't feel unrecognized. I feel accompanied by all kinds of people,
young people, old people... There are some who don't agree, of course,
and they have the right not to, because if I felt bad because someone
disagrees with me, I would have the germ of a dictator in me. They have
the right to disagree. They have the right to think that the path is
dangerous, that the outcome may be bad, they have the right. But
provided that they talk, that they don't hide behind others. Nobody has
the right to do that. Hiding behind others is inhumane, it is a crime.
Everyone has the right to debate, and I wish we would all debate more,
because it creates a smoother connection between us. Debating unites us.
A debate in good faith, not with slander nor things like that.Q. You don't feel uncomfortable with power?A. But I don't have the power. Power is something
that is shared. Power exists when we make decisions that have been
meditated, talked about, and prayed over; prayer helps me very much, it
is a great support to me. I don't feel uncomfortable with power. I feel
uneasy with certain protocols, but that is because I come from the
streets.Q. You haven't watched TV for 25 years now, and you
were reportedly never were very fond of journalists. Yet you have
reinvented the whole communication system of the Vatican, you have
professionalized it and have made it into a dicastery [a department of
the Curia]. Are media that important for the Pope? Is there a threat
against the freedom of the press? Can social media be detrimental for
the freedom of the individual?A. I don't watch television. I simply felt that God
was asking that of me. On July 16, 1990 I made that promise, and I have
not broken it. I have only been to the television center that was next
to the archbishopric to watch a couple of films that I was interested
in, which I thought would be appropriate for my message. I used to love
the movies, I had studied a lot about cinema, most of all the Italian
cinema of the postwar period, Italian realism, and the Polish director
Wajda, and Kurosawa, and several French directors. But not watching TV
didn't prevent me from communicating. Not watching TV was a personal
decision, nothing more. Communication comes from God. God communicates.
God has communicated with us throughout history. God doesn't exist in
isolation. God communicates, and has spoken, and has accompanied us, and
has challenged us, and has made us change course, and He is still with
us. You cannot understand Catholic theology without God's communication.
God is not static up there, watching how people have fun or ruin
themselves. God gets involved, through the word and through his flesh.
And that is my starting point. I feel a little afraid when mass media
don't express themselves with an ethos of their own. For instance, there
are ways of communicating that, instead of helping, weaken unity. A
simple case in point: a family that is having dinner without
conversation, because they are watching TV or the kids are with their
phones, texting people who are somewhere else. When communication loses
the flesh, the human element, and becomes liquid, it is dangerous. It is
very important for families to communicate, for people to communicate,
and also in the other way. Virtual communication is very rich, but there
is a risk if it is lacking human, normal, person-to-person
communication. The concrete element of communication is what will make
the virtual element take the right course. We are no angels, we are
concrete individuals. Communication is key and must go forward. I have
spoken about the sins of communication in a lecture I gave in Buenos
Aires at ADEPA, the association that bring together Argentinean
publishers. The chairmen invited me to a dinner in which I gave this
lecture. I signaled the sins of communication and said: don't commit
them, because you have a great treasure in your hands. Today,
communicating is divine, it always was, because God communicates, and it
is also human, because God communicated in a human way. So, for
functional purposes, there is a dicastery to channel all this. But it is
a functional thing. Communication is essential to the human being,
because it is essential to God.Q. The Vatican's diplomatic machine works at full
capacity. Both Barack Obama and Raúl Castro thanked it publicly for its
work during their rapprochement. However, there are other cases such as
Venezuela, Colombia or the Middle East, which remain blocked. In the
first case, the parties have even criticized the Vatican's mediation. Do
you fear that the Vatican's image may suffer for it? What are your
instructions in these cases?A. I ask the Lord that he give me the grace of not
taking any measure for the sake of image alone. Honesty and service,
those are the criteria. You may make mistakes sometimes, your image will
suffer, but it doesn't matter if there was goodwill. History will judge
afterwards. And there is a principle, a very clear one for me, that
must govern everything both in pastoral action and in Vatican diplomacy:
we are mediators, rather than intermediaries. We build bridges, not
walls. What is the difference between a mediator and an intermediary?
The intermediary is the one that has a real estate business for
instance, who looks for someone who wants to sell a house and for
someone who wants to buy one, he helps them reach an agreement and he
gets a commission, he renders a good service but he always gets
something out of it, and rightly so because it is his job. The mediator
is the one who wants to serve both parties and wants both parties to win
even if he loses. Vatican diplomacy must be a mediator, not an
intermediary. If, throughout history, it has sometimes maneuvered or
managed a meeting that filled its pockets, that was a very serious sin.
The mediator builds bridges that are not for him, but rather for others
to cross. And he doesn't charge a fee. He builds the bridge and then he
leaves. That is to me the image of Vatican diplomacy. Mediators, rather
than intermediaries. Bridge builders.Q. Will that Vatican diplomacy extend soon to China?A. In fact, there is a committee that has been
working for years with China, they meet every three months, once here
and once in Beijing. There are many talks with China. China has always
had that aura of mystery that is fascinating. Two or three months ago
they had an exhibition of pieces from the Vatican Museums in Beijing,
and they were very happy about it. And next year they will come to the
Vatican with their own exhibits.Q. And will you soon be going to China?A. As soon as they send me an invitation. They know
that. Besides, in China, the churches are packed. In China they can
worship freely.Q. Both in Europe and in America, the repercussions
of the crisis that never ends, the growing inequalities, the absence of a
strong leadership are giving way to political groups that reflect on
the citizens' malaise. Some of them —the so-called anti-system or
populists— capitalize on the fears of an uncertain future in order to
form a message full of xenophobia and hatred towards foreigners. Trump's
case is the most noteworthy, but there are others such as Austria or
Switzerland. Are you worried about this trend?A. That is what they call populism here. It is an
equivocal term, because in Latin America populism has another meaning.
In Latin America, it means that the people —for instance, people's
movements— are the protagonists. They are self-organized. When I started
to hear about populism in Europe I didn't know what to make of it,
until I realized that it had different meanings. Crises provoke fear,
alarm. In my opinion, the most obvious example of populism in the
European sense of the word is Germany in 1933. After [Paul von]
Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is broken, it needs to get
up, to find its identity, it needs a leader, someone capable of
restoring its character, and there is a young man named Adolf Hitler who
says: "I can, I can". And Germans vote for Hitler. Hitler didn't steal
power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people. That
is the risk. In times of crisis we lack judgment, and that is a constant
reference for me. Let's look for a savior who gives us back our
identity and let us defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire, whatever,
from other people who may rob us of our identity. And that is a very
serious thing. That is why I always try to say: talk among yourselves,
talk to one another. But the case of Germany in 1933 is typical, a
people who were immersed in a crisis, who were searching for their
identity until this charismatic leader came and promised to give their
identity back, and he gave them a distorted identity, and we all know
what happened. Where there is no conversation... Can borders be
controlled? Yes, each country has the right to control its borders, who
comes in and who goes out, and those countries at risk —from terrorism
or such things— have even more of a right to control them, but no
country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk
with their neighbors.Q. Do you see, Holy Father, any sign of 1933 Germany in today's Europe?A. I am no expert, but, with regard to today's
Europe, let me refer you to three speeches I have made, two in
Strasbourg and the third one on the occasion of the Charlemagne prize,
the only award I have accepted because they insisted a lot due to the
situation Europe was in, and I accepted it as a service. Those three
speeches contain what I think about Europe.Q. Is corruption the great sin of our times?A. It is a big sin. But I think that we must not
think of ourselves as historically exclusive. There has always been
corruption. Always and right here. If you read about the history of the
Popes, you will find some nice scandals... And that is just to mention
my own house and not talk about others. There are examples of
neighboring countries where there was also corruption, but I will stick
to my own. There was corruption here. A lot. Just think of Pope
Alexander VI, and Lucrezia with her [poisoned] "teas".Q. What news are you getting from Spain? What
feedback are you getting about the way your message, your mission, your
work is being received in Spain?A. What I just got from Spain are some polvorones [shortbread] and turrón de Jijona [nougat] that I am going to share with the boys.Q. Ha ha. In Spain there is a very lively debate on secularism and religiousness, as you already know...A. Very lively indeed...Q. What do you think about it? Is it possible that
the secularism process, in the end, will force the Catholic Church out
to the margins?A. Talk amongst yourselves. That is the advice I
give to every country. Please talk. Have a fraternal conversation, if
you feel up to it, or at least in a civilized way. Don't hurl insults at
each other. Don't condemn before talking. If, after the conversation,
you still want to insult the other guy, alright then, but first talk.
If, after the conversation, you still want to condemn the other guy,
alright then, but first talk. Today, with our level of human
development, politics without talking is inconceivable. And that applies
to Spain and elsewhere. So, if you ask me for advice for the Spanish
people, I say: talk. If there are problems, first talk.Q. It is no surprise that your words and your
decisions are followed with special interest in Latin America. How do
you see that continent? How do you see your own country?A. The trouble is that Latin America is suffering the effects —which I emphasized in Laudato Si—
of an economic system that has the money god at its center, and that
means policies that lead to a lot of exclusion. Which leads to a lot of
suffering. It is obvious that Latin America today is the target of a
strong attack from economic liberalism, the one I condemn in Evangelii Gaudium
when I say that "this economy kills". It kills with hunger, it kills
with a lack of culture. Migration flows not just from Africa to
Lampedusa or Lesbos. Migration also flows from Panama to the
Mexican-U.S. border. People migrate in search of something, because
liberal systems don't give them job opportunities and foster
criminality. In Latin America there is the problem of the drug cartels,
drugs that are consumed in the United States and Europe. They make them
for the rich countries here, and they lose their lives in the process.
And there are those who do it willingly. In my homeland we have a term
to describe them: cipayos. It is a classic, literary word that is included in our national poem. The cipayo
is the one who sells his homeland to the foreign power who pays him the
most. In the history of Argentina, for instance, there has always been a
cipayo among the politicians. Or some political position worthy of cipayos.
Always. So Latin America must re-arm itself with political groups that
will recover the strength of the people. The biggest example for me is
Paraguay after the war. The country lost the War of the Triple Alliance
and was left almost entirely in the hands of women. And the Paraguayan
woman felt that she had to rebuild the nation, defend her faith, defend
her culture and defend her language, and she did it. The Paraguayan
woman wasn't a cipaya, she defended what was hers, and she
repopulated the country. I think that she is the most glorious woman in
the Americas. That is an example of someone who never gave up. Of
heroism. In Buenos Aires there is a neighborhood on the banks of the Río
de la Plata, where the streets bear the names of patriotic women, women
who fought for independence, for their homeland. Women have better
sense. Maybe I am exaggerating. Correct me if I am. But they have a
stronger inclination towards defending their homeland because they are
mothers. They are less cipayas. They are less at risk of being cipayas.Q. That is why it hurts so much to witness all the
violence against women, which is such a scourge in Latin America and so
many other places...A. Everywhere. In Europe... In Italy, for instance, I
have visited organizations that rescue female prostitutes who are being
taken advantage of by Europeans. One of them told me that they had
brought her in from Slovakia in a car trunk. They tell her: you have to
earn such and such today, and if you don't bring it in, we will beat
you. They beat her. In Rome? The circumstances of these women, in Rome,
is terrifying. In the house that I visited, there was a woman that had
had an ear cut off. When they don't earn enough, they are tortured. And
they are trapped because they are frightened, the abusers tell them that
they are going to kill their parents. There are Albanians, Nigerians,
even Italians. One very good thing this association does is that they
walk down the streets, approach the women and, instead of asking how
much do you charge, how much do you cost, they ask: How much do you
suffer? And they take them to a safe community so that they may recover.
Last year, I visited one of those communities with recovering girls,
and there were two men there, two volunteers. And one of the women said
to me: I found him. She had married the man who had rescued her and they
were eager to have a child. The use of women for profit is one of the
worst things that are happening today, also in Rome. It is female
slavery.Q. Don't you think that, after the failed attempt of
Liberation Theology in Latin America, the Catholic Church has lost a
lot of ground to other denominations and even sects? What is the reason
for it?A. Liberation Theology was very positive for Latin
America. The Vatican condemned the part that adopted a Marxist analysis
of reality. Cardinal Ratzinger conducted two inquiries when he was
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. One about the
Marxist analysis of reality. And a second one that recovered some
positive aspects. Liberation Theology had positive aspects and also
deviations, mainly as concerns of the Marxist analysis of reality.Q. Regarding your relationship with Argentina, in
the last three years the Vatican has become a pilgrimage destination for
politicians of all colors. Have you felt used?A. Ah, yes. Some say: let us have our picture taken
together, just as a souvenir, and I promise it will be for my personal
use, I will not publish it. And before they walk out out the door it is
already published. [He smiles]. Well, if that makes him happy, that is
his problem. His quality as a person diminishes. What can I do? It's
his problem, not mine. In Argentina there always was a lot of travel,
but nowadays, coming to a general audience with the Pope is almost
mandatory. [Laughs]. There are also those who come who are my friends —I
lived in Argentina for 76 years — sometimes family, nephews and nieces.
But I have felt used, yes. There are people who have used me, my
pictures, my words, as if I had said things to them, and whenever
someone asks me, I always respond: it's not my problem, I didn't say
anything to them. But to each with their own conscience.Q. A frequent subject is the role of laymen and,
most of all, the role of women in the Church. Your wish is for them to
have a bigger influence and even a role in decision-making. How far do
you think that you will be able to get?A. We must not look at the role of women from a
functional point of view, because that way, in the end, the women, or
the women's movement in the Church, will be some sort of chauvinism in
skirts. The functional aspect is all right. The deputy director of the
Press room at the Vatican is a woman, the director of the Vatican
Museums is a woman. But what I want is for women to give us their
thinking, because the Church is female, the Church is Jesus Christ's
wife, and that is the theological foundation of women. What was more
important on Pentecost, the Virgin or the apostles? The Virgin. There is
a long way ahead yet, and we must work so that women may give to the
Church the freshness of their being and their thinking.Q. On some trips, you have addressed the churchmen,
both from the Roman Curia and from the local hierarchies or even common
priests and nuns, to ask them for more commitment, more proximity, even a
better mood. How do you think they receive that advice, that rebuke?A. My focus is always on proximity, closeness. And
it is well received in general. There are always more fundamentalist
groups in every country, also in Argentina. They are small groups and I
respect them, they are good people that prefer to live their faith that
way. I preach what I feel that the Lord asks me to preach.Q. In Europe there is an increasing number of
priests and nuns originating from the so-called Third World. What is the
reason for this?A. A hundred and fifty years ago, in Latin America,
there were growing numbers of European priests and nuns, same as in
Africa and Asia. Young churches expanded. In Europe today there are no
births. Italy has a rate below zero. I think that France is leading the
way now, thanks to all the natality laws. But there are no births. The
Italian welfare of years ago cut down births. We'd rather go on
vacation, we have a dog, a cat, we don't have children and, if there are
no births, there are no callings.Q. In your consistories you have created cardinals
from all over the world. How would you like the next conclave to be, the
one that will elect your successor? Your Holiness, do you think that
you will witness the next conclave?A. I want it to be Catholic. A Catholic conclave that chooses my successor.Q. And will you see it?A. I don't know. That is for God to decide. When I
feel that I cannot go on, my great teacher Benedict taught me how to do
it. And if God carries me away before that, I will see it from the
afterlife. I hope it will not be from Hell... But I want it to be a
Catholic consistory.Q. You seem very happy to be a Pope.A. The Lord is good and hasn't taken away my good humor.

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About Me

”The views expressed on this
social network are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my bishop or the Diocese of Savannah.” Comments that I post do not necessarily reflect my views or the views of the Bishop of the Diocese of Savannah.
I am a priest of the Diocese of Savannah ordained in 1980 at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. I am currently the pastor of Saint Anne Church in Richmond Hill, Georgia. I am the former Director of Vocations from 1986 to 1998 and former Director of Liturgy and Diocesan Master of Ceremonies from 1985 to 1991.